HUMAN RESOURCE TRAINING FOR EFFECTIVE STAFF PERFORMANCE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, INSIGHTS FROM UGANDA

 By

Malowa Davis Ndanyi

PhD Candidate, Higher Degrees Department

Uganda Management Institute

malowandanyi@yahoo.com

Abstract

Local governments have to recognize the important role of employee training and re-training in order to successfully steer the organization towards better performance.  It is imperative for management to invest considerable resources and time for employee capacity enhancement so as to allow local government staff to adequately realize their performance and more importantly to realize the mandate of each local government.  In order for local governments to survive the competition against the public service provision by the private sector or out sourced service, suitable human resource policies that are geared towards employee skills enhancement must be embraced.  Employee enhancement skills should be focused towards quality outputs, customer orientation, productivity, stress management, team work and leadership building.     Human resources training in Local Governments has been decentralized and funded to some extent in Uganda through the  Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, to enable staff at Local Government level perform better. It has been realized that, despite all efforts and funding support provided, training has been arbitrarily done in Uganda’s Local Governments in that  it is difficult to link the outputs of the training to staff performance.  In this paper a separate personnel system in decentralization is used to analyze how human resource training influences staff performance in Wakiso District – in Uganda as a case study. Using findings from 30 respondents and 10 key informants in Wakiso district in Uganda, the study establishes a positive link between human resource training and staff performance. The findings reveal that when human resource training is properly done through   performance needs identification  in LGs or done on job, through mentoring, couching or attachment  there is improved staff performance. But performance has also been affected by  labour  turnovers when staff leave the district service after acquiring skills. This grossly affects staff performance in Local Governments.

Abstract

Local governments have to recognize the important role of employee training and re-training in order to successfully steer the organization towards better performance.  It is imperative for management to invest considerable resources and time for employee capacity enhancement so as to allow local government staff to adequately realize their performance and more importantly to realize the mandate of each local government.  In order for local governments to survive the competition against the public service provision by the private sector or out sourced service, suitable human resource policies that are geared towards employee skills enhancement must be embraced.  Employee enhancement skills should be focused towards quality outputs, customer orientation, productivity, stress management, team work and leadership building.     Human resources training in Local Governments has been decentralized and funded to some extent in Uganda through the  Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, to enable staff at Local Government level perform better. It has been realized that, despite all efforts and funding support provided, training has been arbitrarily done in Uganda’s Local Governments in that  it is difficult to link the outputs of the training to staff performance.  In this paper a separate personnel system in decentralization is used to analyze how human resource training influences staff performance in Wakiso District – in Uganda as a case study. Using findings from 30 respondents and 10 key informants in Wakiso district in Uganda, the study establishes a positive link between human resource training and staff performance. The findings reveal that when human resource training is properly done through   performance needs identification  in LGs or done on job, through mentoring, couching or attachment  there is improved staff performance. But performance has also been affected by  labour  turnovers when staff leave the district service after acquiring skills. This grossly affects staff performance in Local Governments.

Key Words : Human Resource Training, Staff Performance, Decentralization, Staff Retention, Uganda